I recently used Facebook to do a very informal survey. I wanted to get outsider perceptions so I asked of friends and family outside the province, “What do you think of when you think New Brunswick?” The answer was essentially this: “We don’t think of New Brunswick.” Words and phrases like forgotten, vague, don’t know and generic popped up in the answers. More disturbing than this was the fact that many of them had pretty distinct ideas of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. It was interesting to find the Confederation Bridge was quickly associated with P.E.I. but no one seemed aware that the place where it connects to Canada is New Brunswick.
Here’s the irony: since coming to New Brunswick everyone I’ve met has a very distinct idea of what this province is, who they are and what it means to be a New Brunswicker.
I started thinking about this lack of identity outside our own province and started to do some searching. As far as I can tell, New Brunswick is not on Facebook or Twitter. Fredericton is not on either. Moncton appears to be but it is done independent of the city government. (On the other hand, NB Power is on Twitter. So is CBC New Brunswick. And Saint John may have recently joined Twitter.)
How in the world can the province and cities of this province talk about bringing people to the province, particularly young people, and not be using social media tools like Twitter or Facebook or Flickr? That is where the country is; that is where the world is. Where are we? It doesn’t matter whether we like tools such as these. If we need to get our message to people we have to be where they can hear it. You don’t go to northern Saskatchewan to speak to the people of Montreal. You don’t go to a retirement home to speak to young people.
Since coming to this province about 2 ½ years ago, I have spoken to many people in western Canada and most of them have been intrigued about the province. Some have entertained the idea of moving here. Some want to make a trip here, at the very least. Where do I speak to them?
Email. Facebook. Twitter.
I took a walk with friends around Fredericton soon after I arrived here. I took a lot of pictures. I made a video of them and posted it on You Tube. So far, it has been viewed by about 2,000 people. Some have left comments, including someone from Scotland who had visited us and said our city was beautiful. There were some negative comments, which is to be expected, but most were positive and many were from people who had left New Brunswick and felt homesick.
Although it may seem as if I’m arguing for these social media tools, that is not my point. My point is that we seem to talk only amongst ourselves and not the country or the world. Yet it is outside the province where the message has to be communicated. Some of the easiest ways to do this are through social media and, other than time and attention, they cost next to nothing.
Our slogan is, “Be … in this place.” You can’t be in a place if you don’t know what or where it is.
An aside:
Of the top seven Intelligent Communities in the world, two are Canadian. Where are those Canadian cities? Both are in New Brunswick! Why is the provincial government not making noise about this? I see no reference to it on the NB government web site. It’s certainly not on the home page. (Admittedly, the page is so cluttered it could be there and I just didn’t see it.) I can Google it and find stories about this fact, but none are from the New Brunswick government.
Why?
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